Grimm2

I've done a few bio/ tanks, with bio/spines one of them i can scare up a build later. My takes are as follows: Bio: awesome set, tank values and ATOs make it beastly. Loves recharge and slow resist. I enjoy 3 slotting Ablative and Parasitic with 3 +5 heal/rech IOs, DNA Siphon for heals, get e/n def to softcap or above, 27-30 s/l def is just fine. Ageless radial for debuff resistance when def or regen debuffed. Spines: it is what it is! I like Spines, and its single- target damage is lacking. Bio helps with that (I also like Stone Armor for that too). Find a boss and flail, the minions and Lts. will go down by association. I take Barb Swipe, and avoid Impale, to keep the attacks flowing. Ripper slots a FF +recharge. Ice Mistral's Torment can be pieced in to reach for 100% slow resist, or just for it's proc. I put the full ATO sets in Quills and Genetic Contamination, the procs go off enough for me in there.

There I was innocently enjoying my first MM since live (necro/dark) when I go and read this. Yep, alt time! I have a ice/savage/ice that was fun, but I mocked up a build for ice/psi/psi and it looks really, really fun. What's the suggested slotting for Drain Psyche? I never ran /psi in the old days. Edit: found this recent post answering my question, some great ideas there.

I do s/l farms with my spine/stone brute, rad/savage tank, and my bio/ tanks. Is it optimal, will it be as fast as a tuned fire farmer? No way, not by a lot. Usually clear an asteroid in 8-10 minutes. But I still enjoy it sometimes. Your invuln/ tank will survive a s/l farm just fine, I reckon. You might get good use out of dark obliteration, or the Mu AoEs.

Still one of my surprise favorites, 122 vet levels on mine.

I have a bio/fire, and he's really quite good. In a s/l farm, I find i end up dropping bosses before the herd thins, it's wierd having good ST damage on a tank. I also run a rad/savage, and the AOE burst covers an enormous area. Like, even with Tanker AOE radius, you usually have to wait a couple seconds to let them mob you, and ranged attackers will often be missed. Rad/sav opening salvo is literally a carpet bomb, very little is not touched in an average spaced spawn. I do wish for better ST, though. I can see rad/ fire being really, really good. Fire armor might bring better sustained damage, and Rad armor better and wider opening burst, along with being sturdier.

Not anymore, it procs like a normal toggle now, checking every 10 seconds. Since that change occurred, the general consensus is that slotting for set bonuses in the power is preferred.

Here's another one with Particle Shielding and Meltdown active. Radiation Therapy can make you glow for 10 seconds or so, I like to make that bright.

As far as Rad armor effects goes, I've found that light saturation Dark effects make it less obtrusive. I'll try to post some pics later. edit: there we are with all 4 toggles.

So cool you are getting your family in on CoH, it's gonna be a lot of fun! I'd strongly encourage you add Rad Armor to your list of possibilities. Rad Armor has an excellent suite of resistances, absorb shield, debuff resistance, proccable attacks, and bonus recovery to build onto. My latest tank happens to be Rad/savage. Savage would work with any of your interests, the blood mechanic gives you end reduction and recharge, most sets love that. It has no strong single target attack, but great AOE that's even better because, Tanks. No conflict with Hover. Hemo is a skip, but I've heard of folks proccing it to get some timely damage. But seriously, Rad/Savage. Leap/Viscous/Zero/Flurry/Rad Therapy/Flurry, and you have literally carpet-bombed an entire spawn beyond recovery in 10-12 seconds. Very little build sacrifice to do so, as well.

I'm pretty sure it's a feature. Blood Thirst has less +dmg than any other Build Up variant, but has the utility of max Blood stacks and 13 seconds of 5 ticks of dots for every attack performed over its duration. Though since you spend around 3 seconds screaming into the void when you activate it, I guess you get only 10 seconds of juice out of it.

You should be good, then. @PyroBeetle's description of tactics requires no specific end drain slotting... the set's Aim equivalent boosts end mod, and bosses take a hot minute to burn down. Your focus is damage, the secondary effect at its base level is enough.

I'm curious if you mean "I don't want to use end drain at all," or if you mean "I don't want to expressly build for end drain." If the former, you should choose another primary. Elec drains, yo, it makes you an end drainer, and the set gets bonus damage off of drained targets. If the latter, don't fear, build for damage and the set will drain mobs enough for the bonus damage and mitigation on its own. Using an epic aoe immob is a great tactic, but not the only choice that works. And there is every reason to choose Musculature Radial Alpha, for better damage and faster draining. Elec/ Ea was the first and only sent i took to 50, it's very lightly built, and even so all the parts fit together so well. I should complete that toon someday.

I've been playing the Tanker version of this combo lately. The AoE alpha strike of procced Leap/Ground Zero/Viscous/full blood Rending is absolutely magic. Gotta proc the Leap and Ground Zero, though. I hate the single target, I'm not sure exactly what to do about it. I use the T1, Shred (which tanker has a better area on), Viscous, Leap when it's up. I usually pop Thirst for the guaranteed dot, and flail away. I like the -res procs in shred for solo and team, it will get the job done, but it is for sure the dopey attack. Like a kitten standing and waving it's arms, Whap Whap Whap.

I discovered that my 41 rad/savage tank was actually 50 and untrained the other night, so I totally nerded out making a build for him. What a tribute to tanker AOE radius buffs, holy moly. He is Vishnu-X, an alien convert to the hindu faith, with no hands and no feet, bioengineered for destruction. Nice enough guy, though.

Stone Armor is great on Brutes. Yes, Crystal Armor has +Recovery, and as mentioned, is a great place for a Perf Shifter proc. You can build Stone very sturdy without Granite. My Spine/ Stone is graniteless, with near I-softcap s/l/e/n def, 3k hp, ok resists, 54-60 hp/sec. I didn't go for softcap f/c def, but you could. You might consider slotting an extra end reduction in your attacks while leveling, maybe, i hear Axe is thirsty.

I'm still on my Spines/Stone Brute. He's a Dwarf, and a Battlerager. He has enough end to constantly Ninja Run, and Ripper's backflip suddenly makes perfect sense. All I have to press are keys 1-5 and sometimes my keybind for Earth's Embrace, or sometimes click a Destiny power, to keep on flailing, slashing, and thrashing. I gotta make a post just for him sometime.

It is very much worth the read. Along with anything by Roget Zelazny, same era of some deliciously wack fantasy.

The proc is global, any attack will trigger it once its slotted. And agreed, AoEs are great for fishing for a Build Up refresh... makes me want to get back to my Spine/Stone/Dark...

I'm no build master, but put the chance to hide in your Assassin's Strike, and the chance for Build Up refresh in your weakest attack. The Build Up one is global, so any attack has a chance to trigger it. As you attack, you build up stacks of a buff that gives your Assassin's strike 33% chance to crit per stack, can attack 3 times. With the chance to hide in Assassin's Strike, you can follow that big hit up with a guarantee crit on another attack pretty often. Placate... you should experiment with it, but it's pretty useless most of the time IMO.

In my mind, Stalkers and Scrappers are nearly analogous. Stalkers have lower threat modifiers, no taunt auras, great stealth, and lower HP.... and some sets have reduced AOE attacks. ATO procs are transformative for both ATs and their damage potential. From early on Stalkers get the ability to delete a boss with AS from Hide, and AS is always there in the attack rotation with a high crit chance. I guess I really like the stalker perks. Scrappers are probably easier to use and play in the end, but it's really fun to proc Hidden, or Build Up, and go Heh, heh, heh... Edit: enemy-affecting toggles suppress when stealthed, and especially with the Hide ATO proc, I often open up with a big hitter that's not AS or an AoE as an alpha, and just scrap it out.

What a strangely specific ask. Can any AT do that?

I'm building Bio/Fire right now, it hits really hard. I built for decent recharge, which feels like enough so far. I'll need time to compare it to my Bio/ Claws, but so far it looks like a tradeoff of better burst vs. better recharge and control/ safety. I really enjoy getting the debuff resistance Destiny to support Bio, as a side note. Bio's layered defenses are godly, but it can be cracked by serious debuffs. When the defense or regen goes red, hit the Destiny and its smooth sailing. It's also worth to aim for 80%-100% slow resists too, as restricting access to your clicks is as good as one foot in the grave.

So I went ahead and rebuilt my Storm/Bio Sentinel, omitting Gust and adding in Electric Fences. I had an experience that seems to support @Frosticus's position on acc slotting in Storm Cell. I went in first with Ice Mistral's Torment in Storm Cell, and Superior Frozen Blast in E.Fences. Those round of missions (at effective +3/x8) were fine, but I had to clean up each group more than expected. Ice Mistral's Torment has ~60% acc, Superior Frozen Blast has ~95%. I switched the slotting of these 2 powers, and I suddenly had only 1-3 mobs to clean up each fight. I'm inclined to concur that Acc in Storm Cell is important, and if the procs are missing, there's not much of a reason to bring Storm/ to the party over another less fiddly set. I still think the set is fun, but there's no denying you want things to go a certain way, and it doesn't feel as good if it doesn't. It'll be interesting to see the set released into the wild alongside everything else. Edit: WAY better with an aoe immob in play, by the way. Respeccing out of Gust would hurt in low- level play, but locking stuff in the kill zone is bliss.

Ran a series of radios at +4/x8, with a very built-out Water/Bio Sentinel. All the bells and whistles, accolades, Musculature radial, 95% slow resist, debuff resist destiny. Council, carnies, Arachnos. There's a KB IO in Storm Cell, entertained the possibility of a FF+recharge in Hailstones, but I don't think I put it in. No epic powers. Avoided judgement powers. I have had trouble making Sentinels that grab my attention, because all they have to do is blast, and a lot of blast sets are boring to me. Storm is not boring! It feels really fun to play, not necessarily the fastest or most DPS, but not too bad in those departments either. Once the storms are dropped, spamming attacks and watching the havoc is super awesome. I feel like a mini- controller with the knockdown the build was doing. With the endmod from Musculature Radial, and high recharge, bosses were losing endurance enough to affect their attacks. Harrassing a boss is a joy with these powers. There's also a lot of scatter, and cleanup from mobs with a sliver of health left. Arachnos and Carnies are tough as always, but the chaos worked to my advantage and I could chug through them pretty reliably. I'm thinking of rebuilding with electric fences instead of Gust, if I do ill update. It's a cool powerset that has a windup time to be at its best, and just because of that it won't upset the current top choices, I think. +1 to keeping Storm Cell as it is. Agreed that it's basically a neat rain power.

Ironically, AOE Scrambled Minds is back to ST Scrambled Thoughts on Sentinels before I had a chance to test it. Anyone know why it was changed back? Seemed like the feedback was pretty positive. Was the ST damage too sluggish? Going to build something on Test regardless because I've never taken Psy Blast to any appreciable level.